Welcome to colormate’s documentation!¶

Overview¶

Colormate is a color palette management and color harmony addon for Blender. It aims to provide easy import and export of popular color palette exchange formats such as:

.aco (Adobe Color Swatch)
.acb (Adobe Color Book)
.ase (Adobe Swatch Exchange)
.gpl (Gimp Color Palette)
.kpl (Krita Color Palette)
.csv (Colormate Palette)

It also features a color harmony generator to quickly calculate color harmonies starting from a given master color. Harmonies are calculated in four groups Monochrome, Complementary, Triadic and Similar. Color calculation can be straight mathematical or perceptive (more pleasing to the eye).

Feature overview Video:

Getting Started¶

Installation¶

After downloading the latest version of colormate from blendermarket.com:

Open Blender
Open the Blender Preferences via Edit > Preferences or F4 > Preferences
Click on Add-ons on the left and choose Install… (as shown in the image below)
Navigate through your filesystem and select colormate_x.x.zip

Where to find it¶

After installation the colormate addon can be found in the Shader Node Editor’s side panel (Hotkey: N).

If you want to use the colormate GUI in a different location in blender don’t worry, you can dock the GUI in 3 locations. The locations can be configured in colormates Panel docking settings.

Updating the addon¶

Updating the addon can be done one of two ways:

Installing over the previous version

Going through the Installation process again and selecting the newer version zipfile.

If you are doing it this way you still need to disable and reenable the addon by unchecking and checking it in the Preferences to make sure the updated version is loaded.

Removing & installing

Removing the addon with the Remove button in it’s Preferences section and then installing the newer version zipfile as described in Installation

Warning

If you have colors loaded in the Persistent Library and Scene Library and don’t want to lose them save them to a file on disk first!

When you disable or update the addon, it’s preferences will be reset, the colors in the Persistent Library and Scene Library are stored in those preferences.

Global Addon Preferences¶

Contains the global settings for the colormate addon.

Colorscheme Color Harmony calculation¶

Standard Hue:: Strictly mathematical calculation of the four Color Harmony Groups. (Example: complementary color is exactly on the opposite of the color wheel 180 deg)
Mapped Hue (Adobe-Kuler-ish):: Perceptive calculation of the four Color Harmony Groups. Depending on the hue of the color the calculated color harmonies are shifted towards more pleasing colors. This is close to what Adobe online color harmony tool does to get nicer color harmonies.

Library settings¶

Number of columns in gridview:: Changes the amount of columns when the library is in Gridview mode. Adjust this to your liking. This setting affects both library rollouts.

Panel docking settings¶

_images/bl_colormate_docking_locations.png

Panels in Node Editor:: [1] Docks the colormate panels in the sidebar of the shader node editor (Hotkey: N)
Panels in Node Editor:: [2] Docks the colormate panels in the sidebar of the 3D view (Hotkey: N)
Panels in ActiveTool:: [3] Docks the colormate panels in the Active Tool section of the properties panel

Colorscheme Generator¶

Calculates harmonic colors in realtime according to the given master color.

Master Color:: Color that drives the color harmony calculation algorithm
Mono:: Toggles the 8 swatches belonging to the Monochrome Color Harmony Group. The group consists of 8 monochrome color shades.
Comp:: Toggles the 8 color swatches in the Complementary Color Harmony Group. The group consists of 4 shades close to the mastercolor and 4 shades close to the complementary color
Triad:: Toggles the 4 color swatches in the Triadic Color Harmony Group. The group consists of 1 shade close to the master color (first member), 1 Shade for the second member of the triadic group and 2 Shades for the third member of the triad.
Sim:: Toggles the 4 color swatches in the Similar Colors Harmony Group and the Spread slider control. The group consists of 4 shades which are spread apart on the color circle by the angle defined with Spread
Spread:: Angle that is used to determine the distance between shades in the Similar Colors Harmony Group.

Persistent Library and Scene Library¶

_images/bl_colormate_library_listview.png

_images/bl_colormate_library_gridview.png

The Color libraries permit adding, editing, naming, filtering, reordering and removing of color swatches of a color palette. they have two modes, Listview-mode which is meant for editing of palettes and has all the needed buttons visible and Gridview-mode which is meant for quick access.

Persistent Library¶

The Persistent Library keeps the imported or created color swatches and palettes saved in the addons preferences. This means the colors in this library will stay while switching scenes or .blend-files.

Note

Because the colors in the Persistent Library are stored in the addon’s preferences they will be gone if you disable the addon or update it, as those actions reset the addon’s preferences.

Scene Library¶

The Scene Library keeps the imported or created color swatches and palettes saved in the blender file itself. Its the perfect library to store your scene or blendfile specific color presets or schemes.

Library operators¶

Listview¶

Gridview:: Toggle button which switches the library between the two modes.
Name:: Double click the name of the swatch in the list to change it.
Swatch:: Single click opens the color picker which lets you choose a color of your liking.
Filter (Hidden until you click the little triangle arrow):: If your color palette has names for each colorswatch you can use the filter to search for specific colors. Clicking the little triangle arrow gives access to blenders list filtering options. Let’s the user filter by name, sort the list alphabetically or in reverse order. Clicking the magnifying glass inverts the filtering and instead shows everything except the colors which match the querystring.
Add:: Adds a new color swatch to the palette, by default its added at the bottom of the list. Name is set to “Color#” and the swatchcolor is set to white.
Remove:: Removes the currently highlighted swatch from the color palette
Reorder (up / down arrows):: Moves the currently highlighted swatch up or down in the list.
Import:: Opens a file dialog and lets the user choose a color palette file to import (.aco, .ase, .acb, .gpl, .kpl, .csv). The imported palette gets added to the end of the current palette.
Export:: Opens a file dialog and lets the user choose a location and filename to export the current color palette to.
Clear:: Clears the color palette and removes all color swatches.
Grab Scheme:: Grabs all Color Harmony Groups from the Colorscheme and adds them as named swatches to the current color palette.
Sort by Value:: Sorts the color library by value eg. from darkest to brightest color.
From:/ To:/ to Ramp:: Enables the user to define a range of colors by selecting a color in the listview and then clicking on From: or To: to define the start and endpoint of the range. The numbers on the From- and To-buttons are the list indices of the colors and will update to the index of the currently selected color when clicked. The to Ramp-button will create a color ramp in the currently open material with the colors set to those in the selected From-To-Range. Negative From-To-ranges are allowed effectively reversing the color order in the ColorRamp-Node. There is a maximum range limit of 32 colors (colorramp node limitation).

Gridview¶

Search Bar / Filter:: Allows filtering of the colors by a querystring. The Gridview updates after the user hits the return/enter key. Colors in the palette need to have names.